Scientists develop new machine learning method that can make robots safer -
New method provides simpler and more intuitive models of physical situations

Understanding how a robot will react under different conditions is essential to guaranteeing its safe operation. But how do you know what will break a robot without actually damaging it? A new method developed by scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems is the first machine learning method that can use observations made under safe conditions to make accurate predictions for all possible conditions governed by the same physical dynamics. Especially designed for real-life situations, their method provides simple, interpretable descriptions of the underlying physics. The researchers will present their findings tomorrow at this year’s prestigious International Conference for Machine Learning (ICML).

Our goal is to understand the principles of Perception, Action and Learning in autonomous systems that successfully interact with complex environments and to use this understanding to design future systems